Zaraei Ootaque is a company founded by a group of young students at IBA Sukkur, I met this team in the summer of 2012 at a preparatory workshop of the NUST-Discover Business Plan Competition. They got hold of me around 7 pm after the training session. We sat on the school lawns, which was abuzz with mosquitos. I had already had a long day and was ready to leave. However, this team was determined. We sat down to discuss their idea of establishing a consultation service for large-scale farmers in Sindh. While I liked the idea, I asked them to focus on small-scale farmers. The team accepted this challenge and started working on the project.
For almost five months, they worked on the project with their Sukkur Office of Research Innovation and Ccommercialisation team headed by my dear friend Ali Akbar Rizvi and other faculty members, and were able to launch the service. They came second in the competition and were awarded incubation at IBA Sukkur. Their business services started attracting small farmers (with farms under 10 acres) for vet services, soil testing, etc. Soon they had 600 farmers with approximate landholdings of 6,000 acres in their client base. This was when large suppliers of fertilizer, seeds and other goods and services start noticing Zaraei Ootaque and offered them partnerships. It was not feasible to approach every farmer individually, on the other hand collaborating with one entity, who was a strategic partner, made a lot of sense. Today they are running a showcase farm and have revenues of over PKR 48 million (USD 458,000) demonstrating the value of tapping the small-scale market and build the organization.
A Vision for an Agricultural Utopia
Umair Malik and Abdul Samad Sahito, young students at IBA Sukkur, dreamt of improving the lives of farmers. By increasing their agricultural output, they thought they could help farmers break the cycle of poverty that has ensnared rural Sindh for centuries. While in their second year at IBA Sukkur, they came up with the concept of Zaraei Ootaque. The concept was validated in 2012 when they participated in IBA Invent. They obtained seed funding and incubation at IBA Sukkur and piloted their concept while still in university.
Zaraei Ootaque provides agricultural products like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides regardless of whether the farmers have money or not. Zaraei Ootaque also guides farmers on modern agricultural methods to increase their yield through consultation.
When they presented the same concept a year later, they went on to win the NUST Discover. By the time Umair and Abdul Samad graduated in 2014, Zaraei Ootaque’s annual revenue was PKR20 million (US$190,800 approx.) .In 2016, their revenue swelled to PKR48 million (US$457,900 approx.). Zaraei Ootaque has a headcount of 70 employees and provides consultation to 600 farmers and 114 farmhouses with a total area of 6,000 acres.
